Java End-of-Life Dates by Vendor: Why "When Does Java 17 Die?" Has Eight Different Answers

Updated: July 2026  ·  Dates from each vendor's published lifecycle policy, refreshed nightly — methodology

There is no such thing as "the" Java end-of-life date. Java is one specification shipped by many vendors, and each vendor retires each version on its own calendar. Java 17 — still one of the most-deployed versions in production — is the perfect specimen: Oracle's free OpenJDK builds abandoned it back in 2022, Oracle JDK's paid Premier Support ends September 30, 2026, Eclipse Temurin carries it free to October 2027, and Amazon Corretto to October 2029. Same Java, seven-year spread — and which date applies to you depends entirely on whose binaries your servers actually run.

Java 17 LTS — support end dates by vendor

The September 30 decision, spelled out: Oracle JDK 17 leaves Premier Support in two months. The three exits: pay — Oracle Extended Support runs to September 2029 (at a rising surcharge); switch — recompile-free swaps to Temurin (free to Oct 2027) or Corretto (free to Oct 2029) are routine, since all ship the same OpenJDK core; or upgrade — Java 21 or 25 resets the clock entirely. Running Oracle 17 past September without an Extended contract also has a licensing dimension — see our Oracle Java licensing guide.

Java 8 — the version that will not die

Java 8 turned twelve this year and will be commercially supported into the 2030s — Oracle Extended to December 2030, Azul's extended tier to 2032. The date that matters soonest is Red Hat's: OpenJDK 8 support inside RHEL ends November 30, 2026 — four months out. Every RHEL estate still compiling against Red Hat's Java 8 packages needs a vendor switch or an upgrade path before December.

Java 11 LTS — support end dates by vendor

Note the trap pattern: Red Hat already retired its Java 11 build (October 2024) while Temurin and IBM run to late 2027 and Corretto/Zulu into 2032 — so "Java 11 is EOL" and "Java 11 is supported for six more years" are both true statements, about different binaries.

Java 21 LTS — support end dates by vendor

Java 25 LTS — support end dates by vendor

Even the newest LTS illustrates the rule: Oracle's free OpenJDK 25 builds end in March 2026 — six months after release, by design — while the same bits ship free from Temurin to 2031 and Corretto to 2032.

Why the fragmentation exists

Upstream OpenJDK only maintains each version for six months — until the next release. Everything beyond that is a vendor choosing to backport security fixes: Oracle sells the service (Premier → Extended tiers), Red Hat bundles it with RHEL, and Adoptium (Temurin), Amazon, Microsoft, Azul and IBM give their builds away on their own schedules, each ending support when it stops serving their business. The specification is shared; the lifecycle is not. Treat "Java EOL" claims that don't name a vendor as unanswerable — and treat vendor switches as cheap, because they usually are: these are all builds of the same OpenJDK source, and swapping binaries rarely requires code changes.

The compound problem: frameworks pin JDKs

JDK end-of-life rarely travels alone. Spring Boot 2.x estates sit on Java 8/11; older Tomcat, Hibernate and Struts lines pin similar vintages — so a dead framework and a dying JDK usually arrive as a pair, and the framework is typically the harder migration. If that pairing describes your estate, the framework side has its own extended-support market: see Spring Boot, Tomcat, Hibernate and Struts lifecycles, or compare extended-support options →

The checklist

1. Inventory by vendor, not version: java -version across the fleet — "17" is half an answer; "Temurin 17" vs "Oracle 17" changes the deadline by years and the cost by thousands.
2. Oracle JDK 17 estates: decide pay / switch / upgrade before September 30.
3. RHEL Java 8 estates: plan for November 30.
4. Check the framework layer — it's usually the binding constraint. Our Stack Scanner flags both layers from a pasted inventory.

Frequently Asked Questions